Gem Grab is the core Brawl Stars experience, a three-on-three offering in which gleaming, purple gems pop out of a hole in the center of the stage. They’ll get your heart pumping too I’ve already cursed aloud (to myself) at many random opponents (who can’t hear me) when gunned down in the heat of battle. The matches are fast and fluid, and pretty satisfying despite their compact length. It works impressively well: Movement and aiming both feel spot-on, and there’s essentially no learning curve to contend with. And once your special attack charges, another virtual stick activates to aim and launch that. One virtual stick controls your character while another aims and fires your weapon you can alternately tap the latter stick for a single shot at the nearest foe. Matches typically last a couple of minutes, and the top-down view means there’s no fussing with a camera. The oft-lengthy matches also aren’t ideal for hopping in for a quick fix.īrawl Stars doesn’t suffer from these problems, because it’s built for mobile and cognizant of the platform’s limitations. They’re cumbersome and imprecise, and don’t run as well as on older devices. They are certainly good enough if you don’t have a current console or a capable PC, or you’re just hungry for competition on the go, but they’re awkward in all of the ways you’d expect from a mobile port. It’s an objective-based shooter, a battle royale game, a MOBA-lite and more, all wrapped up in an approachable and attractive package.īrawl Stars is cognizant of the platform’s limitationsīoth Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds have been huge on iOS and Android (and everywhere else) this year, but neither is an optimal smartphone experience. Supercell has a history of killing soft-launched games that couldn’t match its vision, but Brawl Stars finally emerged from the gauntlet alive, and seemingly better for having gone through it.īrawl Stars smartly adapts team-based multiplayer shooters for mobile in a way that makes perfect sense for pocket-sized touch devices. During its 500-plus days in limited release, the Finnish studio reworked the controls and progression system, shifted the screen orientation, and made myriad other tweak. Supercell’s free-to-play mobile shooter soft-launched in Canada in June 2017 and then reached a few more countries this past January, but the lethargic rollout suggested that Brawl Stars wasn’t ready to join the likes of Clash Royale and Clash of Clans as an international smash. For a while there, it seemed like Brawl Stars wasn’t going to make it.

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